


both the victor and the vanquished

by thissupposedcrime



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, pre season six
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-19 18:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14879330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thissupposedcrime/pseuds/thissupposedcrime
Summary: Years later, with ebbing tides of war and pages of history stained with his victories and false absolutions, Lotor will have nothing but reflection.Fragments of memories burst through him: the graceful curve of Allura’s cheeks as marks glow, Narti’s tail absentmindedly curling against her chair, Zethrid’s fierceness, planets forfeited, planets gained, the blood of Project Kuron, sharpened to knifepoint precision by Keith’s blades as he finds his Shiro for the final time, blunt swords, men killed, every move questioned, Ezor reappearing with an amused huff, mutiny, disapproving scowls from paladins, comets streaked with new quintessence, halcyon days where the scent of her dogged his every step, Zarkon’s shadow, Altean artifacts transforming his tone to childish adoration.Haggar’s eyes. His mother's eyes.The weight of an empire lost, regained, and never his.(In which Lotor recalls the various love stories that ruined his life).





	both the victor and the vanquished

**Author's Note:**

> Can't believe I wrote a Lotor origin story and combined it with Sheith.
> 
> Significantly more focus on Allura-Lotor and Keith-Shiro dynamics in the later chapters.

Years later, with ebbing tides of war and pages of history stained with his victories and false absolutions, Lotor will have nothing but reflection.

Fragments of memories burst through him: the graceful curve of Allura’s cheeks as marks glow, Narti’s tail absentmindedly curling against her chair, Zethrid’s fierceness, planets forfeited, planets gained, the blood of Project Kuron, sharpened to knifepoint precision by Keith’s blades as he finds his Shiro for the final time, blunt swords, men killed, every move questioned, Ezor reappearing with an amused huff, mutiny, disapproving scowls from paladins, comets streaked with new quintessence, halcyon days where the scent of _her_ dogged his every step, Zarkon’s shadow, Altean artifacts transforming his tone to childish adoration.

Haggar’s eyes. His mother's eyes.

The weight of an empire lost, regained, and never his.

But he’ll inevitably return to Acxa, vanished in the stardust, and wonder, at what price honor?

* * *

Orphans are the Galra way, war-torn and defined by victorious conquest, parents scattered across all corners of all sectors of all systems, alive but only for the empire. Lotor, despite the Altean blood and quintessence thruming through his veins, is not unique for requiring a succession of caretakers.

Myths of Empress Honerva begin with his birth, a final act of duty before her passing. Servants whisper rumors of the woman who lost two planets and died of a broken heart. Others blame King Alfor for not saving her and curse his uselessness. Eventually, no longer ignorant of the disdain of his father’s high command for non-Galra, he questions if she was assassinated. Yet his curiosity is futile. No one utters her name or details of her life to him, a supposed kindness and a curse.

Archives are his sole source of warmth and affection as a child. He locates a recording of Honerva, beautiful and youthful. She’s surrounded by screens, gesturing to alchemic diagrams and equations as particles of matter float gently in test tubes nearby. Lotor hadn’t spent time assuming her voice would be gentle or soothing, but the strength, the factual clip of her words still stuns him. Would she have ever indulged him, taken him into her laboratories and patiently explained processes? What Altean tricks would she pass down and share? Which patterns and movements would he mimic from her?

Sometimes, if caretakers are no longer present, Lotor tries to nod in tandem with this video of her, train himself into her behaviors as if the angle of her chin when refuting an argument was the key to unlocking the legacy of her. He’s childish enough to care, to hope she loved him.

(A broad shouldered man stands to the side of Honeva, eyes wide in adoring worship and pride. He croons “ _my love_ ” to her. She stills. A smile darts across her face. Privately, Lotor is grateful she found joy before Zarkon, but the feeling is ruined when he realizes the man and his father are the same.

He’s lost both parents before birth.)

“You have no mother,” Zarkon scoffs, once, the first and only time he asks. His father moves him to a chilled ice planet for a decaphebe soon after.

It will take nearly 10000 years before Lotor recognizes the origin of his armor’s fatal weakness.

But this is not necessarily that story.

* * *

There are star systems of scorched ground that explain the differences between him and Zarkon, but the starkest division is this: his father has no patience for fools, and Lotor loves them, in his fashion, for how useful they prove to be.

And gods, the Paladins of Voltron are fools indeed.

The barrier around him and chains circling his wrists are embarrassments, rudimentary borderlining childish. A castle warship symbolizing such an advanced culture, and this is their version of a prison. He imagines his mother’s dismay in the afterlife, feels it settle across his shoulders like a cloak. Charitably, he notes the location is deep in the castle, though painfully easy to sneak into the hangar.

He is not alone.

Circling his barrier is the resistance, the bane of Zarkon: a squealing collection of humans, the dark shadow of two masked Blade of Marmora members, and a few Alteans.

Lotor already knows the questions will be an inane waste of time.

Under his breath, the yellow paladin coughs. He nudges his friends in blue and green and whispers, loudly and despite his best efforts at subtlety, “Are you sure he can’t get out? Like what if this is a trap and he wanted us to lock him up here and any minute now his army is going to bust through the doors?”

“Do you think the Galra would put a kill order on someone they want to rescue from their worst enemies?” The green one asks, noticeably quieter.

“Have you ever seen a mobster movie? The bad guys always want to deliver the killing blow!” The blue paladin exclaims. He makes a slicing move against his neck and lets his body go slack. The yellow paladin nods emphatically.

“They’re evil enough to do it Pidge!”

“Guys,” the leader of Voltron warns; Lotor believes his name is Shiro. Beside him, the shorter Blade of Marmora looks up at the ceiling, assumably in despair. Rumors say he’s the missing red paladin, and part Galra.

Allura, flanked by her advisor and the other Blade, steps forward.

“What is your goal?” She is guarded, unamused.

_To survive, to use you all as tools to dismantle the Galra under my father, and rebuild it under my rule. I do not care if you live or die, but I will utilize Voltron as my weapon until then._

Lotor leans forward. “I have given you no reason to trust me, but I came aboard your ship and entered captivity willingly in hopes you would listen to what I have to say. My father is a monster, and there is nothing I wish more than to see the Galra reformed and redeemed, no longer waring conquerors of torture but a race known for aiding others. I am willing to gift Voltron and its allies with all of the hidden supply routes, weaknesses, and information I have at my disposal.”

“And in return?” Shiro says, shoulders fraught with tension.

Admittedly, his plan is ill-thought out, rushed between his pain induced awakening with his former generals to now. Charm will not work on this opponent, nor will threats they deem idle.

But deception is the embodiment of this version of himself, and Voltron and its paladins seem painfully eager to believe the best in people, even if that does not extend to him. Promise them a cause they believe in, freedom or love, a desire Lotor himself wants, and there is nothing but a lie of omission to remember.  
  
“All I request, if I prove myself useful to your cause, is the chance to help save the Galra from my father’s control,” he says, gazing at Allura, then Shiro, like he once did Zarkon in the throne room, pleading for redemption.

Behind Allura, Lotor watches the yellow paladin mouth, “He’s going to kill us.”

Hand on his gun, the blue paladin nods.

Shoving them aside, Pidge, he thinks, rushes forward to ask, “Do you know where the Galra keep valuable prisoners?”

“Pidge!” Multiple voices call out.

“Valuable how?” Lotor thinks of the prison where a human is working on Galra technology and sees another plan align.

“Dangerous, perhaps? I can offer a few guesses of where I would be held. If you’re asking for someone you faced prior, it’s likely they’ve been disposed of by my father,” Lotor adds.

They’ve definitely been disposed of by Zarkon.

Shiro moves forward and tugs Pidge back from the barrier. He speaks to her, softly enough that Lotor can’t hear. Her head thunks against his chest as she grumbles, but she doesn’t return to question Lotor.

“For what purpose-” Allura begins.

The blue paladin looks at Pidge, frowning and staring into space, and interrupts Allura before she can finish her thought.

“Why should we trust you with our teammates?”

They’re a team of soft spots, all of them. This was supposed to be a challenge.

“I would not have saved your former paladin otherwise, if I wished you harm” Lotor remarks, tone bland as he casts down his first glorified bargaining chip. “Or would you prefer his life sacrificed?” He adds, nodding toward the shorter Blade.

Allura stills in confusion instead of rebuking for the interruption, and her Altean advisor swallows nervously. The younger earthlings, however, erupt in movement and borderline squawking. Humans are easily led but exhausting creatures.

“Keith, what did you do?” The yellow one questions, horrified. Next to him the tiny green paladin’s fists repeatedly open and clench as if she’s still debating hugging or strangling her friend. Another is flailing his limbs in uncontrolled gestures and unintelligible shouts. Keith ignores them, muscles tense. He must truly be Galra, Lotor muses, as the weight of his glare pierces through his mask to cut at Lotor.

Lotor dismisses their boisterous concerns to hone on Shiro, a grim marionette with strings cut, all fight gone. Soldier poise transforms into quiet frailty. Revealing his almost loss traumatizes him markedly more than a planet detonating around his head. His eyes are dark, empty. Then the look passes, and he stands tall again, the only hint of weakness the tightness in his jaw.

“Keith,” Shiro commands, and the other man turns towards him and away from Lotor, compelled by a unique gravitational pull.

“What needed to be done,” Keith sighs. A quiet hiss indicates his mask is gone, and he moves closer, one hand tugging down his hood and the other extended to touch his friend’s shoulder. “Shiro,” he starts, voice tender. “I-”

The others begin shouting.

“What needed to be done? You would have died! ”

“Did you not think to warn us, man? Or say goodbye? That’s not fair.”

“Should someone put him in a pod? Coran, can we do that when he’s not looking injured?”

“Wait, Coran, did you know?”

Keith huffs with no gentleness, “This isn’t the time!” He tugs his hood upright.

“Indeed,” Allura says, apparently the only one to recognize fighting in front of the prisoner who ferrets weakness with ease isn’t in their best interest.

The words galvanize Shiro into gathering his paladins to order, but he’s already delivered a cataclysmic weapon to their enemy.

Keith will die. He is canon fodder in a war. Politically meaningless, Lotor grants he’s smart, at least clever enough not to show his face, but hardly intelligent enough to be measured invaluable. A disobedient member of his Blades, he’s volatile even among friends. His temperment does him no favor, goaded into needless battles against Lotor and willing to sacrifice himself with no hesitation.

Realities such as these won’t end his life.

Being Shiro’s personal solar flare will. Keith was marked for death the moment the others looked in concern for Shiro’s reaction, even before responding themselves.When someone in power allows others to know their weakness so painfully obviously, bloodshed is an inevitability.

He doubts they noticed.

Favoritism serves no one well, and Lotor’s cage is proof of that.

* * *

“When will mercy mark me too weak for your cause?” Acxa asked him what now feels like forever ago, gathering soil in a crater of a moon near Thayserix.

It’s a loaded question. Each sees reports of Voltron’s continued success across the galaxy, and each remembers she had the ability to kill one such paladin in the Weblum. Sometimes she confounded him, this woman with a greater capacity for wickedness that he himself possessed.

Lotor moved to draw a blade against her neck, a sharp reproof, but her parry was instantaneous, effortless.

“Never,” he smiled, quicksilver sincere, once, for her.

Now, he understands the truth, temple burned with the press of her lips and back scarred with the shot of a gun that struck through his heart.

Mercy saved him. Acxa saved him.

He will return it twofold and kill her.

* * *

Zarkon is a phantom presence in his young memories. Lotor is taught to admire and respect his emperor. No one instructs him on how to love his father, what to learn of life from him.

But, initially, Lotor does not fear him. However distant, his father must care for him like he did Honerva, the pieces of her in him.

Then, the witch arrives, and all he remembers afterwards of his childhood is corruption and fear.

(And, hidden in the archives, the whispers of _my love_ ).

* * *

“How far in advance did you plan to join the coalition?” Allura asks, early during his tenure of ‘prisoner’.

The possibilities are unlimited.

From birth? From the moment Haggar’s grip became the focal point of his father’s empire? Or perhaps the first time they viewed his progression as a sword fighter and leader as motivation to cryogenically freeze him asleep for thousands of years, periodically waking him, only to entrap him until all he knew were dead, again and again.

Before Acxa or after Narti?

The moments succeeding the dislocation of his shoulder blade or the time spent blinking away the red lights of the explosion he prevented Keith from sacrificing himself in?

“Not early enough,” he decides, likely the closest answer he has to honesty.

Somehow, despite the naivety he attributes to her, Lotor thinks she understands this is all he can offer.

“Rescuing Keith was coincidental and self-serving,” Allura says. Her tone lacks judgement, but the statement is resolute fact.

Instead of noting how obvious the sentiment is, Lotor replies, “Allies are always necessary in a war.”

No, they aren’t.

Her lips purse into a grimace, and Lotor knows she’s thinking of his generals, occupying Galra territory somewhere.

Lotor has no interest in visiting the topic, and adds, “I remember how fierce a warrior he was, how necessary he was to Voltron as a leader. Your friend isn’t just important to fighting against Zarkon, but key with the various positions and responsibilities he holds.”

A light continues blinking from a corner of his barrier. The compliments weren’t for Allura to hear anyway.

Keith isn’t the sun of her solar system.

Against her own wishes, Allura smiles, for barely a tick, and agrees, “Keith is all that and more.”

Each of them know the more, the pardon for preventing his death, is what Lotor cares about.

It is honesty enough, for now.

* * *

Haggar’s experiments and witchcraft spare no one, especially the emperor’s son.

Thousands of years later, he still hears the theories of druids and scientists alike, nonplussed he’s in the room.

“Quintessence warped his life expectancy.”

“How is aging provoked and developed? Trauma? Temporally?”

“We must measure his growth in comparison to his peers. Those born when he was are almost dead, yet he’s barely a teenager.”

“What can we harvest of him for Zarkon’s life to continue?”

“Can he die?”

The tests continue, and the answers remain grim and open-ended.

Lotor learns to survive between the knives dug into his skin by scientists and sword masters alike. He thrives despite the witch’s ruin as his trainers, doctors, and peers warp into nothingness by the relentless touch of time.

But pain is the most dutiful teacher of all, accounting for all his flaws and inexperience. He grows. He adapts.

Zarkon’s fierceness distorts further into hatred. In response, Lotor shifts towards a supposedly gentler touch against enemies, creating allies and consolidating miniscule levels of influence through the pretty promises of agency and safety.

He watches his emperor and his witch, and vows to protect whatever goodness Honerva’s blood left in his veins. Honor from Honerva.

One thousand years into existence, Lotor, barely creeping out of adolescence, is punished for insubordination, for crimes against the empire.

His charges are lengthy: sparing enemies in the arena, stabbing the cruelest of Haggar’s spies, one who tormented the prettiest of Galra and starved the others, ignoring his father’s commands, inspiring others to do the same.

“You believe yourself better than your emperor? That his means of ruling don’t apply to you and the plans we have?” Haggar’s accusations roar. Zarkon rests on his throne, and his glare, as always, drills past Lotor, as if his own son doesn’t register enough presence to merit his full attention.

Unfortunately, Lotor is rash and only somewhat experienced with self preservation.

“Senseless cruelty isn’t effective. There are other ways to rule,” Lotor argues. Haggar strikes back with a flash of purple magic boring into his chest.

“Remove the abomination,” Zarkon orders. “He’ll learn soon enough.”

Guards drag him, resisting, into a room of pods, inject him until he sleeps.

Lotor awakens, permanently, roughly nine thousand years later.

* * *

He bides his time as weeks, as the humans call them, waste away. The intel he offers is flawless. Certain paladins, distrustful, no longer assume he’ll break out of the cell. Thankfully, the louder ones keep their distance.

(Lotor’s monitored how the technology monitors him, the shifting patrols in the early nights of capture. Escape is easy, but unnecessary for now.)

Constantly being drugged and frozen by an emperor struck by delusions of immortality and grandeur have prepared Lotor to play a match of strategy longer than the lifespan of humans.

His captivity has been another valuable tutor. In remaining a prisoner, he realizes with greater ease there may be no need to kill these paladins. They’ll be executed or cease to exist long before he must contend with them as enemies.

Still, for all the interrogations and pushiness of the human girl, they remain ridiculously slow.

Lotor tells himself it’s boredom of their slow maneuvers, not impatient frustration that finally gives into temptation to deliver Pidge Holt’s father.

(If Kova’s murmur and the silence of Narti float through his head, it is a reminder that the rash approach isn’t the wrong one.)

Of course, Team Voltron prove themselves to be the universe’s greatest morons as they ignore his warnings about Zarkon’s trap in the prisoner exchange.

10000 years of squabbling children pretending at conquering and the ignorant masses they commanded did not prepare him for the ignorance of Voltron.

If Pidge survives the upcoming hostage trade, he’ll strike her down first.

* * *

Lotor is awakened because his father locates a giant, metal cat. If nothing else of him survives this regime, he hopes the scorn is immortalized.

He remembers the Voltron mythos, watched vids in the archives of his childhood of Zarkon, uncorrupted, and King Alfor. They were men of honor, men of ingenuity, the original combination of Altean and Galra that caused his existence. Peace was an option under them.

Now, all that stands for that legacy is an immobile, barrier protected cat.  
  
A truly loyal Galra would rejoice as their emperor’s plans come to fruition. No one has offered an idea on ferreting out its peers, nor how to prompt said lion into welcoming them, but that does not halt the optimism.

Lotor knows the reality; his father is insane, and his discovery is just another in a long line of temporary motives that test Lotor for roughly a hundred years or two and then cause his cryogenic freeze again.

Yet if the centuries have metamorphosed Alfor and Honerva’s Zarkon into a glowing eyed beast, so too have the years and sleep altered him. Gone is the need to intervene as guardian to the innocent without a concentrated plan. No longer does Lotor view open resistance as key to success. Instead, his tactics are subterfuge, false piety to his emperor.

It is a game of endurance he plans to win.

But then Zarkon dispatches him to govern Trianitus, a planet mining Quintessence. It is to be the first civilization under his control, a test to prove his contributions, his merit as his emperor’s son. Failure equals death.

Trianitus, as he will one day tell a beautiful Altean princess, is his first true heartbreak, the worst casualty in his war. Lotor will present the facts clearly: he learned to cooperate and care for the people and the planet, and Zarkon destroyed it when he would not. He is a banished, neglected prince, sent to the outer reaches of the Galra empire, out of sight and out of mind until recalled by Haggar. This is how he meets Voltron, generals in tow.

Allura will not know the other narrative of Trianitus, the one coursing through his veins, re-atomizing him into the man before her. She will not know how friendly the citizens were, the warmth of the sand, the light of quintessence poking holes between the foliage on trees. He is incapable of explaining how his shoulders strained from working too hard in the processing plants as he gained information on quintessence and the people. He misses them. He misses so much.

What words can he offer about the various skin tones, voices, genders, hair textures, breaths he encountered that represented a now lost culture? How can he stand before the universe as the sole survivor, knowing full well refusing Zarkon’s request to destroy the planet wasn’t enough? Are there ways to describe the desperation as he sent secret transmissions ordering evacuations even as their lives were being forfeit?

On Trianitus, Lotor loses much more than the game of obedience, the war of attrition between himself and Zarkon.

He loses himself, and it isn’t until standing in the prison in the Castle of Lions does he recognize the subsequent exile didn’t result in a re-discovery, but a transformation of his own.

* * *

War songs thrum against his temple as he walks across the abandon terrain to his presumed death in exchange for a hologram.

_A hologram._

How did these fools become the focal point of his father’s vengeance and the scourge of the empire, and emerge victorious?

How did he not succeed in killing them?

Fittingly, it is Acxa who collects him, composed and silent. Ezor shifts nervously from atop the ramp, but Acxa is absolute.

It’s irony that twists inside him as his staunchest defender rests a hand of restraint on his back in front of his sworn enemy, the one monster in the galaxy he dreams of murdering with his own sword. From where he stands, he can peer at her from the corner of his eye. To all others, she has no weakness, but she was Lotor’s longer that she was anyone else’s, and he her’s, so he counts upon a slow reaction time for her to reach a gun, sees her favor one side, as if the other is bruised. Acxa is unhappy, but it is no longer his concern.

He wonders what she gathers from him.

(The dullness of his skin due to the weeks of captivity without sun. A crease in his brow when the real Sam Holt is presented. Remembers a version of him that would dissect the flaws of this exchange with sardonic humor and a touch of impatience. How he shifts weight onto his right leg, preparing to strike forward. A new weapon, hidden from view in a compartment easy to access with his hands cuffed in front of him, sword a diversion if they want to remove something from him.

She questions if he recognizes she sacrificed herself again to ensure his freedom.

The answer is no, not in the present, not even in the past, not until far too late.)

* * *

Banishment hardly begets freedom, even under the guise of Lotor’s control being absolute on the planets he conquers.

Tinnitus is emblazoned somewhere in him he cannot access through the shock and scars, but its legacy is relentless. Lotor continuously measures clemency versus personal survival. Kindness loses every time, without hesitation. Fondness for the locals is a trick of light, of cadence. His tone soothes. His smile widens for the public.

He refuses to learn names. It makes him weak.

It makes him sick.

Sometimes, in the heat of the sun, or with waves of submerged cultures lapping at his heels, he still feels the chill of the cryopod, and mourns.

He’s not sure for what.

Or who.

* * *

Deluding the masses comes with the ease of fighting to Lotor. It is automatic. It is a tangible part of him. Yet he tries to avoid deceiving himself. That way lies ruin. That way lies Zarkon.

Zarkon.

Dead.

He cannot lie and say he never dreamed of this moment, envisioned the feeling during frustrating years with spies hunting him down, with drugs for sleep pumping through his body.

The dreams are pale and unimaginable in contrast to beautiful reality.

But, holding his father’s former bayard over his corpse, Lotor knows this is only the first step.

But what a step indeed.

* * *

Loyally, supposedly, he has served the Galra empire, given the token praises necessary for supplies, for reports to creatures Zarkon likely plans to murder, even as they bleed for the Galra.

Navigating the balancing act is difficult, but between watching everyone who knew him as a child wither away or pass between periods of frozen captivity, Lotor has learned to do more with less.

Zarkon deploys him further and further from the hub of the empire. Occasionally he begs to remain, vows to do better. It is a reoccurring play, the act of father and son, emperor and soldier. Lotor has learned his lines well, even under the evil gaze of the space witch.

Nothing about the drama is sincere, except Zarkon’s increasing belief his son is a waste of time, of space.

Excellent.

It is the Honerva, the Altean, in him that will survive this empire yet.

* * *

Across the multiverses, there is a version of Lotor not born of tragedy. King Alfor would be his godfather, allow him to chase Allura around the Red Lion’s paws, kindred spirits. They would age together, possibly love each other, unite in marriage on Altea while Lotor’s sisters competed to run Daibazaal.

Honerva would lean against his father in contentment, brought together without the rift and the suffering it wrought.

Ten thousand years later, Lotor would be long dead, as would his children and their children.

On Earth, the Kerberos mission would conclude successfully.

Somehow, the stardust and atoms of possibility would bring about Acxa, gracing her with steady aim and a leader she wouldn’t need to shoot.

But these are idle thoughts that a future emperor has no time to indulge in.

* * *

Trianitus is long cratered, and his banishment long assumed permanent, when he arrives of Hiomiexa, a remote planet long held by the Galra for harvesting materials and scientists alike. Galra have rapidly become a populous minority, breeding with the locals and keeping it in empire control.

If ever asked about his tenure there, a planet of minerals and resources, he’ll be incapable of offering descriptions of the sky, streaked with the red light of passing comets, or how wherever he stood, he could look up and see five moons during the endless nights.

It’s impossible to speak of the winged creatures, furry and fast, kept as pets or the sloping rooftops, even the poorest of neighborhoods utilizing solar power. There are no memories of if the people opened their doors wide for his visits, nor the foods sampled, nor the sights of the mountains covered in fauna.

Sounds of metal clanking and processing aren’t recalled. Music is meaningless, lost to him if he ever engaged with it. He doubts he did.

But he remembers Acxa, present and solid and _there_ before he entered the atmosphere.

And that might be enough.

* * *

It was enough, once.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, this fic began in the aftermath of season 4 when I felt Acxa saved Lotor from the generals killing him and remains connected to him, even if he isn't aware of it. Then I dawdled...
> 
> ALSO I have feelings about the fact the official Voltron statistics of Acxa and Lotor claim she is more wicked but canonically shows mercy. 
> 
> Lotor’s birth (Honerva pregnant when entering the rift) mean his lifespan is radically different from a typical Galra. I was not prepared for him to be 10000 years old and put him to sleep accordingly for narrative purposes. God damn. 
> 
> Season 3-4 Lotor is known for playing the long con and a palatable ruthlessness. Season 5’s apparent softening of him (Allura/Emperor/Altean Heritage) are fascinating components. Yet I’m personally waiting for him to betray Team Voltron whenever convenient this season.
> 
> The goal is to wrap this story up with a large second chapter (a lot of which has been published on tumblr) focusing on the contrasts between Allura and Acxa and how they represent the Altean and Galra sides of him, and Keith and Shiro trying to kill Lotor for the other's sake. Look for it in the next few days, because I need this story done before season 6.
> 
> [Feel free to scream about this series with me on tumblr](http://thissupposedcrime.tumblr.com/)


End file.
